Friday, May 27, 2011

More 3D Discussion by Michael Bay and James Cameron

In the last few days we've gotten video of James Cameron and Michael Bay discussing the pros and cons of working in 3D. Now, we get more from THR which wasn't included. Here's a clip:

Michael Bay: Years ago, Jeffrey Katzenberg called me and he says, "You gotta do 3D; I need directors like you to do 3D so we can get it going in the theaters ..." and I'm like, "Thank you, Jeffrey, no." Then I visited Cameron, whom I met on the set of Titanic when I was young. I was shooting Transformers, and he invited me to the set of Avatar. I walk in, and it's like Mission Control with all the cables and the men and women -- more hard drives than you can even imagine. And I'm like, "Oh, this is so not me." And Jim was very polite. He stopped his shoot for about an hour, and he showed me around. You know, I'm kind of old-school. I like good old-fashioned anamorphic lenses, Panavision cameras, 35-millimeter film, where you can touch it, feel it -- and 3D is not that. It's all ones and zeros. (1) And Jim comes up to me, he goes, "God, WETA has some great algorithms!" And I'm smiling, "What the f-- is he talking about?" Then the studio asks me to do 3D for this one. And after a lot of investigating, the last call I made was to Jim. He said: "You gotta look at it as a toy. It's another fine tool to help get emotion and character and create an experience." And I'm always trying to create a great summer experience for the moviegoer.

Apparently, THR is going to run the entire transcript, and hopefully the full video. In the meantime you can read what's available at Bay's site.